"The Family" Is Landing at Kennedy Space Center
"The Family" Is Landing at Kennedy Space Center
Then-Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), top right, with wife Grace Nelson, seated right, and two students at the March 2013 Florida Student Leadership Forum on Faith and Values. (Uncredited photo via University of Central Florida.)The Kennedy Space Center is preparing to host an event this week that’s secretly run by the controversial Christian group that funded a defense of Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ+ death penalty.
The event is the Florida Student Leadership Forum (FLSLF), running from Friday through Sunday. The FLSLF website says it will take place at the Kennedy Space Center, but NASA tells me that the event is being held at the privately operated Visitor Center.
The FLSLF was co-founded by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in 1992, when he was in Congress. Nelson has been a longtime insider of the secretive group behind the FLSLF, known formally as the Fellowship Foundation and popularly as The Family.
Nelson’s wife has served on the board of both The Family and its new spinoff, the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation. Her family financially supports both The Family and an affiliated organization that helps with the student leadership forums.
NASA tells me that Nelson will not be involved in the 2024 Florida Student Leadership Forum, but declined to characterize any role he may have had in its planning.
The Family has a long history of insinuating itself into and cloaking itself with the mantle of government. The Florida event has a similar history of implying it’s an official government event, concealing its organizational ties, and masking its Christian nature.
The 2024 FLSLF comes amid heightened national tensions between evangelical Christians pushing religiosity into government, and Democrats increasingly willing to fight back.
I reported last year that The Family paid to fly Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) to Uganda, where he defended the new anti-LGBTQ+ death penalty there. And as I wrote last month, when pressed by Congressional Equality Caucus Chair Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), The Family declined to condemn the law.
Genesis
The Florida Student Leadership Forum was established in 1992, spinning off just two years after the creation of its national counterpart. The inaugural FLSLF was hosted by Nelson and his wife.
According to the FLSLF website, Nelson had also helped start the National Student Leadership Foundation in 1990, along with then-Vice President Dan Quayle and Family insiders including then-Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), then-Gov. John Ashcroft (R-MO), and then-Rep. Jim Slattery (D-KS).
A decade later, the National Student Leadership Forum was run by now-Rep. Tracey Mann (R-KS) from 2000 through 2002, just a few years after Mann served as the first intern for then-Rep. Jerry Moran, another Family insider.
Mann — who’s been both a birther and Big Lie supporter — has traveled to Guatemala’s prayer breakfast on the dime of The Family’s affiliate there and co-chaired this year’s National Prayer Breakfast. He and his co-chair, Rep. Frank Mrvan (D-IN), co-sponsored a bill to move the U.S. breakfast into the Capitol rotunda.
At least two other people publicly identified as working on The Family’s student forums have been listed as Family employees in tax filings.
And the National Student Leadership Forum has had a place of privilege at The Family’s National Prayer Breakfast. According to internal Family documents I obtained, the forum team got to invite more than 150 people to the 2016 prayer breakfast.
A source close to The Family told me a few years ago that interning with the National Student Leadership Forum puts students at the heart of The Family. That includes time with two sons of the late Family leader, Doug Coe, and pitching in at The Family’s C Street residence for members of Congress.
A year interning with the national forum “really means spending a year with Tim [Coe], David [Coe], and [college friend] Marty [Sherman], their close friends and their world,” the source told me. Students who sign up “volunteer at C Street [and] cook dinner for the Tuesday night dinners,” the source said.
“[T]he vast majority of [the National Student Leadership Forum] and its network and community is just the family and friends of people involved in the Fellowship [Foundation] over the years,” the source said.
The forums connect participants with powerful politicians and other Family insiders, and vice versa. By way of The Family, the forums — superficially benign apart from mingling church and state — share ties with more overtly anti-LGBTQ+ organizations and activities linked to The Family (which itself funds anti-LGBTQ+ networking around the world).
Stan Holmes, a longtime Family insider and associate of right-wing Christian Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), lists the National Student Leadership Forum as an “associated work” along with at least two groups with anti-LGBTQ+ track records.
One group, Young Life, bars LGBTQ+ people from leadership positions. Another, Cornerstone Development, is an African group led by Tim Kreutter, The Family’s point man in Uganda, who works with the parliamentary prayer group and the National Prayer Breakfast there.
Kreutter is also a co-founder of the Africa Youth Leadership Forum (AYLF). The AYLF’s organizers have included David Bahati, now a member of Parliament, one of the leading instigators of Uganda’s LGBTQ+ death penalty.
Also involved with the AYLF was MP Cecilia Ogwal. It was Ogwal, as I reported last year, who said at Uganda’s 2023 prayer breakfast, “There is a force from the bottom of Hell attacking familyhood in our society… And that is this force which is called LGBTQ, the homosexuality forces.”
Kreutter has continued to help Bahati. That includes supporting both the parliamentary prayer group that’s been the driving force behind the death penalty, but also the prayer breakfast, which has served as a rally to bolster Ugandan support for the death penalty, especially in the face of resulting economic sanctions.
Even The Family’s new spinoff, the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation, has tapped Walberg as a co-chair. And several opponents of LGBTQ+ and abortion rights sit on the new foundation’s board, including former Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN) and Aderholt’s wife, Caroline, a leader of Concerned Women for America.
Students who applied for this week’s Florida Student Leadership Forum would have no way of knowing any of this. Nothing about The Family, the FLSLF’s religious nature, or the right-wing leanings of the people behind it. For one thing, the FLSLF website doesn’t list any company or nonprofit responsible.
“Florida Student Leadership Forum” doesn’t appear in corporate or nonprofit databases.
I asked NASA’s public-relations team about the FLSLF, including its ties to anti-LGBTQ+ networking. Acting NASA Press Secretary Faith McKie didn’t respond to my specific questions, but said in a statement that the FLSLF “is a private event paying to use the Visitor Complex at Kennedy Space Center, which is operated by Delaware North, a private company. There is no NASA involvement.”
Delaware North didn’t respond to my questions about how it vets groups to use the facility. Instead, I got a statement saying, “As is our policy, we are unable to share information about private events that have contracted to use any of our meeting venues.”
The company directed my questions to the organizers of the event, so I emailed The Family’s spokesperson and an email address for the FLSLF, but got no response.
Behind the Curtain
The closest thing to disclosure about the FLSLF’s true nature comes on the page where you pay to sign up. Once applicants are ready to register, they click away from the FLSLF website to a third-party page to pay the registration fee. This page names the International Foundation, The Family’s d/b/a, along with an address in Maryland, a PO box that The Family uses in other documents.
There’s no explanation, though, of what the International Foundation is. And no indication that it’s a d/b/a. But other connections have also emerged over the years.
In 2019, a political action committee called Common Sense for Florida’s Heartland disclosed paying $2000 to the International Foundation for an unspecified “event sponsorship.” The address listed was the FLSLF’s Florida mailing address.
And the fact that it’s a Republican PAC is just one tell about the event’s politics. For instance, “Male” and “Female” are the only gender choices the FLSLF website gives its college-student applicants.
The FLSLF also shares The Family’s history of portraying itself as either governmental or non-governmental, religious or secular, depending on the circumstances.
Its home page, for instance, displays the Florida state Capitol, even though the FLSLF is private. Similarly, its page about the national forum shows the U.S. Capitol.
After I first approached NASA about the FLSLF, the phrase “Kennedy Space Center” disappeared from the FLSLF’s home page (although it remained elsewhere).
And the FLSLF is apparently still vacillating today about how to characterize its Christian nature in public.
On Feb. 1, the FLSLF site identified Jesus as its focus. It said, “Believing that Jesus of Nazareth is one of the greatest leaders in history, his principles are the basis for much of the discussion.” But that sentence is now gone.
As of March 22, the site had changed to explain that Jesus is just one religious figure among several up for discussion. It now says, “We will also consider Leaders like Jesus of Nazareth, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King and William Wilberforce, who have changed our culture and made an impact on our world.”
On March 4, a University of North Florida Instagram account promoted the event as the “Florida Student Leadership Forum on Faith and Values,” but said nothing about which faith. On March 13, the same account added a disclaimer: “This forum is particularly suited for those of the Christian faith.”
Even the name of the event changes, adding or dropping “...on Faith and Values” from the title.
A sister event in Nebraska, also tied to The Family, actually is run by a distinct legal entity. And the Nebraska organizers have made clear that injecting religion into politics is the heart of their mission. They disclosed that goal to win a 2003 court ruling that let them avoid paying taxes by proving the event was about religion, not leadership.
“Its goal is to encourage leaders to model the life and teachings of Jesus Christ,” the judge concluded. “The officers of the [Nebraska Leadership] Foundation only seek speakers for the events that have ‘like beliefs’ and the Foundation only espouses one religion, Christianity, purposely focusing only on that religion.”
The state argued that the Nebraska event wasn’t primarily religious because it was led by “business and political leaders,” not clergy.
The judge, however, found that the goal was clearly to inject religious belief into business and politics. “The evidence is abundant that the design of these activities is to let those in leadership positions know that it is acceptable and possible to lead with their faith rather than hide their faith.” Historically, however, The Family has done both.
In Florida, the disconnect between the forum’s Christian essence and secular veneer was flagged even earlier, by a disappointed student. As with the Nebraska case, this is the first time her account has been reported publicly.
After the 2001 FLSLF, the student wrote to a state judge, Major B. Harding, who had endorsed the event. The student, a Muslim, wrote that she felt “very uncomfortable and out of place” at the FLSLF.
She said she didn’t know going in “that the Forum seemed to be intended for affirming Christian beliefs.” She explained that, “I didn’t expect this at a Leadership Forum that made no mention of any religion in its recruitment papers.”
She also cited “group prayers ascribing to Christianity” and “testimonials of how ‘accepting Jesus as their savior’ had changed their lives.” She noted that all of this “simply was not what I had been informed of in the brochures.”
And she wrote to Harding, she said, not to complain, but “in hopes that in the future no students will feel the discomfort I sensed at this Forum.”
Harding forwarded her letter to the event organizers, listing an address also used by Nelson’s Senate campaign.
The Nelsons
I submitted multiple public-records requests with NASA, requesting any correspondence Nelson had with FLSLF organizers. NASA said they found nothing.
A NASA official who handled my request told me that Nelson is required to forward emails from any personal email accounts if they relate to official business. Any emails Nelson forwarded would have been searched, too, the official said.
When I asked NASA spokesperson Steven Siceloff whether Nelson had discussed or considered participating in the FLSLF prior to my inquiry, he said NASA would not elaborate beyond McKie’s statement that Nelson isn’t involved.
But both Nelson and his wife have years of involvement. Pictures of them at past FLSLFs have appeared online going back two decades. Nelson’s wife Grace has continued to bankroll groups involved in The Family’s student leadership forums even in the wake of Family scandals and even after her husband became NASA’s administrator.
Today, Grace Nelson is a board member of the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation, the Family spinoff that runs the ostensibly new breakfast on Capitol Hill.
She is also a former Family board member. And the Cavert Family Foundation, which she helps run, has been a supporter of two organizations behind the National Student Leadership Forum.
Those organizations are The Family itself and the Mt. Airy Center. According to the Mt. Airy website, the National Student Leadership Forum “focuses on training people in the leadership principles of Jesus.”
In 2016, the Mt. Airy Center converted to a church in order to “propagate the ‘good news’ of Jesus Christ to all peoples.” The conversion also freed Mt. Airy from having to file tax forms. But its final filing identified multiple Family insiders running Mt. Airy, including Vice President Tim Coe, Treasurer David Coe, Secretary Marty Sherman, and at least one other longtime Family board member.
Grace Nelson’s family foundation, in its most recent filing, identifies The Family and the Mt. Airy Center as its two biggest 2022 recipients, apparently with specific intent to support the student leadership initiatives. The Cavert Family Foundation disclosed giving $39,251 to the International Foundation and $3,400 to “MT AIRY CO NATIONAL STUDENT LEADERSHIP.”
Reporting for Mother Jones, Jeff Sharlet and Kathryn Joyce spoke with Grace Nelson about The Family in 2007. She said all legislators were welcome, as long as they submit to “the person of Jesus.” They also reported that she once ran the Florida Governor’s Prayer Breakfast, picking breakfast partners for then-Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL).
I’ve previously reported that Grace Nelson served on The Family’s board during years when it funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kreutter’s Uganda operations. And while I’ve cited her invitation of a Ukrainian LGBTQ+ supporter to the National Prayer Breakfast, she’s also invited at least one Ugandan legislator who allegedly later voted for the LGBTQ+ death penalty.
(One of Grace Nelson’s co-submitters, jointly inviting guests to the prayer breakfast, has been Doug Burleigh, The Family’s point man in Russia. His ties to operatives Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin remain largely unexplored by U.S. investigators.)
Nelson himself made news for injecting religion into his new job within his first year as NASA’s leader. In public remarks about the James Webb Space Telescope, Nelson called it “significant” that the 2021 launch was delayed until Christmas Day and quoted The Bible:
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament shows his handiwork,” Nelson said. “Those immortal words in Psalm 19 encapsulate the expressions that we have today — the handiwork of God — as we peer back in time, over 13 billion years ago, [and] capture the light from the very beginning of the creation.”
Jonathan Larsen is a veteran reporter and TV news producer, having worked at MSNBC, CNN, and TYT. You can support his independent reporting by becoming a subscriber.